I Want to Eat Your Pancreas by Yoru Sumino

I Want to Eat Your Pancreas by Yoru Sumino was published in 2013 and has manga and anime to go with the light novel I read. 

I watched the anime before reading this light novel, and so many of my questions were answered by reading the book. The art in the anime is incredibly beautiful. The title makes it sound like a slasher story, but in reality, the title is a tender thing the characters say to each other. This is a story of friendship and love. 

When the main character finds a diary of one of his classmates, he discovers she is dying from a pancreatic disease. He is the only one outside of her family who knows that Yamauchi Sakura is dying. She is an extrovert and fun loving. He is very quiet and keeps to himself. She helps him step outside of himself and see more of life. She takes him on her journey to do things she wants to do before she dies. 

Quotes I liked: "I was greeting the house. This is where I've grown up. The place is important to me" (155). 

"Everyone is where they are because of the choices they've made. . . All the choices you've made brought us together. You and I met by your own decisions" (178).  

"Living is sharing connections with other people" (199, 200).

"When you are all on your own, you don't know who you are" (200).

"The flooring had darkened at the edges along the wall, as if fragments of the pervious patients' illnesses had accumulated there and wouldn't let go" (210).

I enjoyed this touching story and find I prefer light novels to manga. 

 Read to a child today even if that child is you. 

Link to our NICU book registry to donate books to babies in the newborn intensive care unit so their parents can read to them while they grow. You can also donate gently used books to our project by sending them to me or to Angie. Email me for a mailing address. We can use both English and Spanish books. If you have a graduate of the NICU, or if you have a baby whose life you would like to honor by donating books to this project, let me know, and I can make a book plate with their name for the books you donate.